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April 08, 2016Food for Thought: Hungry for #Diversecanlit
There was a homeless man standing on the side of the road the other day with a sign that read “Lost my job. Spare a bit of change.” I didn’t have change – I rarely do – but I had a banana, so ...
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December 12, 20237 Writing Lessons I Learned from Gardening
I am by no means a capital G Gardener, but planning and tending to my little patio garden brings me a lot of comfort and satisfaction. While getting my garden ready for winter, I found my mind wandering ...
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April 12, 2014
Oh, Suspense!
In some literary circles, "suspense" is a bad word. Some feel that rich language and interesting characters should be enough to engage a reader's attention, and those who need a little pep in their fiction ...
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May 24, 2018
In Praise of … Reading Widely
I wonder if other writers feel a particular dread I sometimes get when I’m working on a new story or poem. It happens when an idea, or an approach, or a certain trope comes into my mind, one that suddenly ...
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March 17, 2014You Are God
Writing is all on the page. Take most other arts: film, music, painting, and what goes into the making of each – the processes, the materials, the effort, are not obvious, are not laid out bare. There’s ...
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May 10, 2018
In Praise of … Celebrating Success
Ours is a household that celebrates everything. Each year my wife and I mark the following occasions: the anniversary of our first date (March 19 – she gets roses, and we go back to the restaurant where ...
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May 21, 2018
In Praise of … Performing Your Work
A passion for public speaking, for public performance, has been with me even longer than the passion for writing. I trace it back to when I won a public speaking competition as an elementary school student ...
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May 07, 2018
In Praise of … Book Reviewing
I still remember where and when I got into the book-reviewing racket. It was the late 1990s in Halifax, about a year after I graduated with my journalism degree from the University of King’s College. ...
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May 17, 2018
In Praise of … Writing Manuals
Writing cannot be taught. It’s a phrase I hear a lot, and I totally get the sentiment. Writers sometimes want to believe that what they do on the page is pure magic, and some people have the gift and ...
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March 28, 2014If Not DRM, What Then? (Part II)
A few people, some of them writers, have written to me, wondering about the fuss surrounding DRM. They very much want their work protected from copying, and didn’t realize a kind of hysteria exists ...
